Under questioning, Rice shows herself to be the airhead she is

Introducing an excerpt from Cal Thomas’s upcoming interview of Condoleezza Rice, the editor of Jewish World Review comments: “We think the Secretary of State comes off as utopian and rather naive. She needs to go.”

Indeed she does, and indeed she does. The interview excerpt is exciting, because it is the first time to my knowledge that anyone has questioned Rice on the actual basis of her conviction that Muslims want democracy for themselves and peace with Israelis and others. And all Rice says by way of an answer, over and over and over, is that she doesn’t believe that Muslim mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. That’s it, folks. That’s the sum total of the intellectual basis for the Bush Doctrine of defeating terrorism by spreading democracy. There’s no there there. There is this empty, unctuous slogan—unworthy of a normally intelligent 12-year-old—that moms the world over want nice things for their kids.

If, starting four years ago, the mainstream conservative media had asked the kinds of direct, challenging, persistent questions that Thomas asks of Rice here (“I’d like to know what evidence you have,” “Do you think this or do you know this?”, “You think you know it?”), the idiocy of the Bush Doctrine would have been made manifest to everyone and Bush would have been forced to come up with a more reality-based strategy for dealing with Islamic extremism. But the mainstream conservatives all acted, at best, like deferential followers or, at worst, like a cheerleading squad, instead of like thinking human beings. Of course, they describe their shameful refusal to think logically about patently ridiculous statements as “standing by the Commander-in-Chief.” It is only now—now that the Bush plan in Iraq has failed so badly that even its supporters cannot conceal the truth from themselves any longer—that a conservative columnist finally asks the kinds of probing questions of Rice that should have been posed to her and other administration officials years ago.

- end of initial entry -

A reader writes:

This was a devastating interview, wasn’t it?

LA replies:

And ALL that was necessary to expose her was a few direct, logical questions requiring of the questioner nothing more than, say, a 110 or a 120 IQ. After all, how smart does one need to be to ask, “What is your evidence that parents’ love for their children means that Iraq can become a democracy?” Or, “How do you know that ‘Fighting them in Iraq means that we don’t have to fight them here?’ Haven’t numerous terrorist attempts and attacks occurred in America and elsewhere in the West despite the fact that we’re in Iraq?” Yet those simple, commonsensical questions, crying out to be asked, have not been asked during all these years.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 29, 2006 11:05 PM | Send